This poem was written while on a run that I dragged myself out for, as the title hints, at night. Since I have such easy access to the treadmill, it’s become the default for any situations that require even a modicum of mental effort to convince myself to run outside. Raindrops in the sky? Treadmill. Slush on the ground? Treadmill. Too dark outside? You get the idea. On this particular night though, with my daily run pushed off till much later than usual, around 8ish pm, I decided against the treadmill.
It was the first true night run I’ve had in a while, with pitch black skies that were so breathtakingly clear it seemed like you could see the stars in the sky for miles and miles. It was everything you’d want a run to be. A little danger—the roads were incredibly icy, with a section of unanticipated black ice that left me comically skating right as a car was turning into the road—, a lot of clarity—it had been quite a long day, with lost of thoughts stuck, unclarified, in my head—, and the greatest deal of awe—at the magnitude of it all, of me being lost in it, in seeing myself as that tiny speck, among so many other specks, otherwise lost in the vast expanse of black sky above me. Somewhere in that run I wrote this:
run at night
every now and then,
a run under the stars is what you need
— but not yet what you know you need
, or want
for who jumps?
who?
At thought of [run at night], [in dark and cold],
on [frozen rain, ground slick // no light]?
who jumps but I?
writing—running, under starlight
I’ve been trying to gamify my running recently in order to up my mileage, and while it hasn’t worked as much as I’ve wanted to, I have tried to make a fun challenge around it which I hope to make into a video series. If you want to follow along: Average Runner tries to run Elite Mileage